The World's a Stage
by levele3
Summary: John and Sherlock are called upon to examine a mysterious murder most foul.
1. The Play's the Thing

A/N This is an idea I've had for some time, this is my expanded version of "What Dreams May Come." I have long since associated Sherlock with Hamlet and was overjoyed upon hearing Benedict will take on the role in August 2015.  
It is not required for you to read WDMC first but if you are looking for something digestible in a short amount of time fill your boots.  
I own nothing, credit goes to Sir William Shakespeare, Sir ACD, and Messer's Moffat and Gatiss  
In the line of show canon events this fic takes place sometime before Hounds.

"All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts"

-William Shakespeare (As You Like It)

John and Sherlock were summoned to the crime scene in the usual fashion. It was all swooping Belstaff and messy curls as they rushed into The Knox Community Theater. John had insisted there was no rush, the corpse could wait for them after all, but Sherlock had been plucking idly at his violin stings for hours when he got the call to investigate a murder.

Lestrade and company were already there milling about the lobby and aisles of the theatre, collecting evidence. The corpse was on the floor, just below the stage and Sherlock strode towards it with precision, John jogging slightly to keep up with his taller friend's stride.

The hour was late; no one was supposed to be at the theatre this time of night. The only light illuminating the rather large area was the ghost light on the stage, just above the body.

"How long" Sherlock demanded as he knelt down next to the corpse looking for clues others surely missed.

"Not long, maybe two hours, tops." Lestrade replied.

"You look like shit, if you don't mind my saying so." Lestrade said turning to John, noticing the dark circles under his eyes, and other signs that betrayed his lack of sleep.

"I would sleep, 'were it not that I have bad dreams'" John replied.

Lestrade made a soft laugh at John's little joke and gave him a knowing look, Sherlock ignored them.

"Who is the victim, then?" John asked nodding his head toward Sherlock and the corpse.

"A mister Clinton Ramsey, he was going to be the lead in the play."

"What was the play?" Sherlock asked suddenly coming to stand by them.

A sudden chill ran through the room and everyone seemed to have stopped performing their tasks. Some even openly stared at Sherlock in horror.

"Well" Lestrade let out a shaky breath and the whole room began to breathe again "you see, Sherlock, The Play's the thing."

"Where in I'll catch the conscious of the king?" Sherlock replied turning the phrase into a question and raising an eyebrow. He turned back to the corpse with a frown on his face.

Lestrade and John both blinked several times very quickly.

"Well he is English" John attempted by way of explanation, "He's bound to know _some_ Shakespeare."

"Yeah, but I could quote Doctor Who all day, and he wouldn't have a clue what I was on about" Lestrade retorted.

"I don't know _Shakespeare_, John, I _know_ _Hamlet_. Was it _Hamlet_ that he was supposed to play in?" Sherlock asked turning back to Lestrade.

The room held its breath again and Lestrade shook his head no.

Sherlock looked back at the corpse. He wasn't dressed in costume just normal jeans and a plain black t-shirt. He had been found dead on the floor less than half an hour ago by the loan member of the custodial staff. There was no obvious sign of death. No blood, no blunt force trauma, no cuts or unusual marks of any kind. And the door had been locked. The janitor had to use his key to enter the room.

Sherlock didn't know much about Shakespeare but he knew Lestrade had given him a clue albeit by refusing to say the name of the play, "_the play's the thing_" he had said, Sherlock let the words play over and over again putting emphases on different words each time. Finally it snapped in place _The Play_ is the _thing_, _the thing_ which caused harm to the actor. It was because of the play he chose to do that he had met his untimely end. But what play was it, and why would no one tell Sherlock.

"You don't look too pretty either." Sherlock heard John say to Lestrade, no doubt carrying on an earlier conversation. Delete. Focus.

"Yeah,'to sleep perchance to dream' and all that" Lestrade said, keeping with the evenings theme. "You should hear the dream I had the other night. It was weird to be sure."

"Oh? Do tell." John was genuinely interested; anything that didn't involve him almost dying was a good dream.

"So I was this sort of bounty hunter" Lestrade began "and somehow I'd ended up hunting dinosaurs on this spaceship that was hurtling towards earth."

"Really!" John exclaimed, he couldn't believe the Detective Inspector had such bizarre dreams.

"Yeah and the best bit was Queen Nefertiti was there and afterword's she came back to live with me."

"You're just missing your ex-wife" Sherlock interjected, still mulling over the body.

"Sounds more like the plot of a science fiction show then a dream Greg, you sure you just didn't fall asleep with the telly on?" John asked.

"Might 'ave done." Lestrade replied with a shrug of his shoulder.

"You say the man was going to be the lead?" Sherlock asked suddenly.

"Yes" confirmed the Detective Inspector.

"Well obviously it was his understudy who did it. We just have to figure -"

But the DI was already shaking his head in the negative, "there wasn't one."

"Wasn't one what?" Sherlock let a flicker of confusion cross his face.

"An understudy, no one else wanted the part."

"You mean to tell me this theater;" here Sherlock moved his hands around to show him encompassing the building "is putting on a production of a _Shakespeare_ play with only one person being selected to play the lead."

It was every bit as unbelievable as Sherlock made it sound.

"Perhaps I could work it out, if only I knew the Name of The Play." Sherlock near shouted, making no effort to hide the frustration in his voice and ignored the people closest to him who visibly shuddered. A new girl on the forensics team actually squeaked and ran from the room.

It was time. John took Sherlock forcefully by the elbow and dragged him from the theatre auditorium. Out in the lobby John found what he was looking for. Pinned to one of the cork boards was a call for auditions for _Macbeth_. John pointed at it but Sherlock only stared at him quizzically.

"John I think you overestimate my acting abilities, I _really_ only know a little _Hamlet_."

"I don't want you to audition for it Sherlock," John said though a clenched jaw, "it's _the play_, you know, _The Play_."

"Oh, you mean the one no one will tell me the name of." Sherlock said using his most condescending voice.

"Yes." John huffed out a breath of frustration.

"Why won't they say it?" Sherlock asked all genuine curiosity.

"Well, because a lot of bad stuff happens around this play. People can be very superstitious about it. One thing is its bad luck to say the name in a theater unless you are performing it. It's something that has become ingrained into the culture." John explained.

He was standing close enough that he could see Sherlock's eyes dilate fractionally in understanding then looked confused again. "It's only a name" he protested, "what harm can come from a name?"

"Maybe that's a better question for _Romeo and Juliet_." John quibbled.

"What? I told you _John_ I only know-"

"_Hamlet_, I know, I get it." John finished cutting him off. John was quite familiar with the tragedy himself but he was also aware of many of Shakespeare's other works.

Sherlock made his way back into the auditorium but thirty minutes later he was no closer to solving the, was it murder? or just accidental death? Logistics told him the man was pushed off the stage, but a quick check of his neck showed no sign of broken bones. He could have tripped, but on what? Not even the carpets had a fold in them. Sherlock checked the man's pulse points several times just to make sure, but in the end he had to admit defeat.


	2. What Dreams May Come

Outside the tiny theater John watched as Sherlock and Greg shared a cigarette. He allowed it this once because the death with no explanation really had Sherlock riled.

"I just can't believe" he was mumbling, mostly to himself, "cursed. Bah, how can a play be cursed? There's a cause, there must be a cause."

He suddenly stopped in his pacing turning to face Greg he shook the other man's shoulders.

"Let me know the minute you get any tox results back" Sherlock begged.

Lestrade let out a puff of smoke when he laughed, "of course, now call yourself a taxi and get home."

Sherlock walked off mobile to his ear as Lestrade extinguished the butt of his fag.

"You know" he said suddenly turning to John, "the stage lost a fine actor when Sherlock Holmes decided to become a detective."

John raised his eyebrow to that but said nothing.

In the cab ride back to Baker Street Sherlock seemed more out of sorts than usual for not managing to solve a case. He was curled in upon himself huddle next to the cab door as though expecting he may need to open it at a moment's notice and roll out of the moving car.

"There is lots of room, why don't you spread out a bit?" John asked keeping his voice low and soft.

"'I could be bounded in a nut shell, and count myself a king of infinite space.'" Sherlock quipped back at him.

John had no answer for that and so let the silence fill the cab the rest of the way home.

Once inside the flat Sherlock made a beeline for his violin which he had tossed aside earlier and began plucking the strings once again.

John mumbled what he hopped was a cherry sounding "night" as he climbed the rest of the stairs to his room. Immediately after flicking on his light John wished he hadn't. Catching a glimpse of his reflection in a mirror John thought 'Shit, Lestrade's right, it looks like it's been days since I've had any rest.' John looked thoughtfully at his bottle of sleeping pills but he was exhausted and didn't doubt Morpheus would have any trouble finding him tonight.

Light out and curled in bed in his favourite pyjamas John found sleep in a blink and tonight sleep brought him dreams. Not warzone nightmares but real dreams.

John dreamed of an empty stage with a single white spot light shining down on center. Suddenly a boy around 14-16 stepped into the light. He was dressed in all black, nearly blending into the heavy velvet curtains behind him. Silver buttons winked at him in the light and John could almost imagine it was not the harsh light of an incandescent bulb but the pale glow of a full moon.

"_To be, or not to be: that is the question_" the boy began, but it was not the cracking voice of a youth that made its way to John's ear. "_Suffer the sling and arrows of outrageous fortune_." It was the strong solid voice of an adult male. "_To die, to sleep; No More_" and while John had never seen a picture of a young Sherlock there was no mistaking that slight frame of the boy before him or that mop of messy curls. "_The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to._"

Of course after tonight John would dream of _Hamlet._ Not only that but _Sherlock_ as _Hamlet_.

"_ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come_" John knew _Hamlet_ was a dark affair and found it almost ironic that its most well-known soliloquy, and arguably one of Shakespeare's most famous, was about death and the contemplation of suicide. "_For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law's delay_" Sherlock's voice continued to drift in and out of as John dreamed of all these musings.

Why did death and mortality hold such a strong grip on the living? "_But that the dread of something after death, the undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveller returns._" The light on the stage was beginning to dim; John's vision blurred giving Sherlock a hazy outline. "_Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought._"

The stage went black and the dream drifted away. And he let out a contented sigh.

John's next dream featured a woman who he couldn't quite see. She was somewhere just out of his vision, just beyond his reach. He just knew he had to get to her. She had something, something important, that belong to him.

Sherlock stood frozen at the end of John's bed. Words he thought long forgotten had flowed ceaselessly from lips, once started it was impossible to stop until he had spoken the whole thing. Damn his eidetic memory.

John released a sigh of contentment and Sherlock smiles at him. Idly he wonders what has captured John's thoughts in these small hours. If only he knew what John was dreaming about? What was it that made that tired face look so relaxed? Sherlock resolved to let John sleep in late, he needed the rest.

Silently Sherlock exited John's room just as he had entered it. _Exeunt stage right_ Sherlock thought to himself as he softly latched the door behind him.

Sherlock placed a hand on the barricade now between him and John and whispered to the door;

"Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow"


	3. Epilogue: Flights of Angels

John made his way up the seventeen steeps to the flat for what he assumed would be the last time.

The funeral had been almost a week ago and it had taken him that long to get everything of his from this desolate place. John surveyed the living room one last time forcing himself to do a 'stupid check.' Anything not already packed and gone wasn't worth keeping. His eyes stalled on the skull and John remembers the first time he entered the flat. Sherlock never had told him how he came to possess such a 'friend.' Looking at that lifeless grin John remembered something not so distant.

A case they'd had a few weeks back wormed its way into John's thought process. The skull reminded him of _Hamlet_, which in turn made him think of Sherlock. The words came unbidden to his mind, and though he never heard him say them, it was in Sherlock's silky baritone; "_Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio_." Just like to Hamlet in the play the skull was a sign to John that life was all too fleeting and mortality would come to all.

John continued his scan of the room and next landed his gaze upon the violin. It's careless owner having left in propped in his chair. Long pale fingers would never again pluck those strings or rosin that bow. Something compelled John to edge toward it as though it were a wild animal ready to abscond at a moment's notice.

Carefully John picked up the much loved Stradivarius and placed it gently in its case. John closed the lid slowly and clicked the buckles into place. Suddenly the case felt very much like a casket.

If Sherlock was Hamlet, John pondered, did that make John, Horatio? 'Good, kind Horatio' who was left at the end of the play to pick up the broken pieces of Elsinore. John was not much of an actor, but he treasured his role as Sherlock's sidekick. If 221B was their castle John would not disappoint in his duties.

Carrying the case out before him John marched the Stradivarius down the hall humming a funeral drudge. Cautiously John opened the door to Sherlock's room which had been left as neat and tidy as ever.

The bed had been made with freshly laundered sheets that would never again be slept in by its owner. The draws were no doubt full of neatly organized pants and socks that would never again be fully appreciated.

While the rest of the flat had been organized chaos, Sherlock's room was just organized, period. Spotless. The letters OCD floated across John's mind. Sherlock would have killed him if he had found him here but John had to be Horatio, he had to finish the play.

John propped the encased instrument up against recently fluffed pillow, leaning over slowly he briefly touched his lips to the top of the case.

"Good-night, sweet prince" he choked out, "and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."


End file.
